Carriers of Genetic Diseases in the Mexican Jewish Community

Background: Preconceptional screening of genetic diseases is currently a underused and very useful tool, especially in populations that are at risk to be carriers of genetic diseases, such as the Jewish people, with carrier rates as high as 1:4 for any autosomal recessive disease. The Mexican Jewish Community is one of these populations at-risk, and there is no modern genetic research of the carrier rates in this community.

Goals: This research project in the Mexican Jewish Community aims to determine the prevalence of carriers in the community in order to properly generate in the future, a systematic carrier screening in the community.

Research Plan: The investigators propose a descriptive, observational, cross-sectional study, in which a representative sample of the Mexican Jewish Community (Which composes of Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Middle-Eastern Jews) of 250 patients, in which we´ll collect a saliva sample with a collection kit. Furthermore, the sample will be sent to a private commercial laboratory to perform the Comprehensive Carrier Screening to analyze the 301 genes included in the test plus the 13 add-on genes.

Analysis: Other demographic variables will be collected from the patients at the time of the sample collection to identify possible risk factors (geographical origin, number of Jewish grandparents, history of genetic diseases, et. al) and a correlation analysis will be performed to verify the strength of those risk factors on the carrier status of the patients.